New pastures

Thank you for visiting my blog!

I haven't posted here in a while. Feel free to peruse the older stuff you'll find here, of course, but you can find more recent updates on my Substack - wesviola.substack.com - and explore my work in general on my Linktree - linktr.ee/wesviola

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Family and Private Life

or: 'I Never Thought I'd Marry Theresa May' Another one about the UK coalition Government's 2012 rules dividing British Citizens from their loved ones overseas.  Learn more about the rules from BritCits . I couldn’t have been happier, the day of our wedding. Looking back through the photos now, it’s hard to believe it - I was so overjoyed I didn’t even notice the Home Secretary there: stood between us on the pagoda where we said our vows, or sat at our table stuffing her face with cake. Parting was hard at the airport. You told me I’d see you sooner than I thought (you overdid it. By the time you stopped telling me, you ’d got me convinced I’d be seeing you that weekend). Much harder, though, was when I got to my place on the plane, and there she was, in what should have been your seat, and her awful leopard-print heels. She follows me around now. Goes all the places you would with me. It’s really not the same. There she is at breakfast, and lunch and ...
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Animals Live in My Lungs

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In early 2020 I was invited by the Illuminate Rotherhithe community project to write a poem about migration, specifically inspired by the Mayflower pilgrims, to perform at their community celebration later in the year. That event never took place - it was one of the first I was connected with to be cancelled by the pandemic. This year, Illuminate Rotherhithe came back, and asked me to write and perform a poem about this year's core theme - TREES. I knew I was set to perform the poem at the bandstand of Southwark Park, so took a wander down there to see what trees would be around us. It's almost all London Planes ; suitable for a festival whose core theme is migration since London Planes are not strictly native at all, being a hybrid (deliberate or accidental) of Planes orient- and occidental. They've become such a familiar and welcome part of the urban landscape of our capital that they bear its name. I asked Pat Kingwell - a man with extraordinary knowledge of Southwar...
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The Naughtiest Thing

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"Once upon a time in a place called Wheatley (which means wheat field, and is well named) there was a field of wheat - I tell a lie, there were many..." 'The Naughtiest Thing' , a tale of lies and curses and forbidden forays into wheat-fields, is set to be published as a Glastonbury Broadside Ballad in the first week of March 2020. Image by Pezibear from Pixabay
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